The Up-Down by Barry Gifford Read Free Book Online Page B

He doesn’t suspect it’s not, does he?”
    Punzy pushed Pace down into a chair and plunked herself on his lap. She strung her arms around his neck.
    â€œOf course not,” she said. “Are you still sweet on Bitsy?”
    â€œNothing’s happening or will be between me and your sister. “
    â€œThen will you please take me to bed?”
    Punzy kissed Pace on the lips and pushed her peppermint-tasting tongue into his mouth. Pace had not been with a woman since his brief encounter with Siempre Desalmado, and now he had no desire or reason to resist Punzy, so he did not.

 
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    16
    Pace should have guessed that his taking up with Punzy would not sit well with Bitsy. He had just purchased a bottle of Barbancourt rum when Bitsy cornered him as he stepped out of Spike and Mike’s Liquor Room in Bay St. Clement. She was wearing white overalls to accommodate more comfortably her increasingly protruding stomach and a faded black Are You Experienced? Jimi Hendrix T-shirt. Her uncombed hair fell loosely around her shoulders and she was not wearing make-up. Still, she looked lovely and healthy, Pace thought, except for an expression on her face that made her appear as if she had just slaughtered a rabbit and bitten off its head. The only missing element was a smear of the decapitated creature’s blood around Bitsy’s mouth and chin.
    â€œYou just had to go and bang Punzy, didn’t you? Damn it, Pace Roscoe Ripley, you didn’t give a second’s thought about how it would make me feel. Bein’ pregnant and all, I mean. My emotional quotient ain’t two blips off the perilous line, anyway, and then I gotta get an earful from my daddy-complected little sister who’s practically the only person I’ve confided in concernin’ your probable complicity in the upcomin’ Great Event, about how she and you are romantically involved and she’s fast convincin’ herself that you’re the man of her just-past-adolescent dreams. For your information, this is the same shit she broadcast about that decrepit, washed-up lounge lizard Mexican boozehound had a hard eight won’t work any more, so don’t get carried away thinkin’ you’re so g.d. special.”
    Pace stood and stared at this wild-eyed, wild-haired harridan whose acquaintance he had no recollection of ever having made before. Bitsy was winded from delivering her diatribe and was breathing hard. Pearl-sized sweat beads decorated her forehead and her mouth was locked in a paralyzed snarl. He waited until she seemed to have regained her composure before he spoke.
    â€œWhat do you mean ‘practically’?”
    Bitsy was puzzled. “Huh?” she squeaked.
    â€œYou said Punzy was practically the only person you confided in about us.”
    â€œYeah, so?”
    â€œI thought it was our understanding that the possibility of my complicity, as you put it, was our secret to protect Del. And don’t forget your not playin’ straight with me from the jump.”
    Bitsy stepped back and ran her white-coated tongue around her lips as if she were cleansing them of the last few drops of rabbit blood.
    â€œFuck it, Pace, I’m a girl.”
    â€œI guess my grandmama Marietta’s Mob beau Marcello Santos was correct when he said, ‘Three can keep a secret if two are dead.’”
    â€œLeave Punzy be, Pace, is all I’m sayin’. She’s damaged goods. You don’t know the whole story and no matter what she might have told you about herself it couldn’t be the half of it. Not only that but her crazy Aztec husband is due to come crashin’ out of the jungle any minute. Punzy didn’t tell you he’d be huntin’ her ass down?”
    â€œShe only said she wasn’t sure if he would or not.”
    â€œWell, he’s comin’, and knowin’ Abstemio Cruz as I do, he’ll sniff Punzy’s cunt juice on your peckerwood pecker